Tabitha carpenter, ACMA, CGMA CFO, Volvo Financial Services, Northwest Service Centre.

AuthorPayton, Scott
PositionQ&A - Interview

When did you qualify with CIMA - and how did it fit in with your career path?

I started studying CIMA in 2003.I was already AAT (Association of Accounting Technicians) qualified so I was exempt from the CIMA foundation level. I sat the intermediate and final exams over four sittings - completing them in 2005.

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I joined Volvo Financial Services as an assistant accountant just before I started taking my CIMA exams. From 2003 to 2005, I focused on basic reconciliation work and trying to understand the business; the leasing industry was obviously very different to the public sector, in which I worked before joining Volvo Financial Services.

In 2005, just before I became CIMA qualified, I moved out of the finance team and into operations for around two years, then back into the finance department as UK finance manager in 2007.

In November 2011, you completed a major international finance integration process covering Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands and the UK. How did that process evolve?

In 2008, the UK finance service centre was responsible for seven of Volvo Financial Services' European markets. I moved into a business controller role focused on analysing trends and forecasting for these seven markets. A year later, I moved to the Netherlands for nine months, working full time in the Dutch office, taking over from the country's previous finance director.

Here, I worked on migrating the Dutch finance function back to the UK, ensuring that all systems and processes were aligned throughout the finance service centre. This helped us to gain greater control of processes and increase efficiency. I then returned to the UK service centre to bed these processes into my team.

Next, I turned my attention to integrating the Belgian finance function into the UK service centre. During this process, I was promoted to CFO of Volvo Financial Services, Northwest Service Centre.

By November 1, from a finance and accounting perspective, Belgium and the Netherlands, as well as Ireland, were all controlled by my team in the UK, with all processes completely aligned.

What challenges did the integration process present - and how did you overcome them?

The language barrier was a significant challenge when I was working in the Dutch office. The Volvo Group is an English-speaking company, but in practice people in country offices tend to speak the local language. Variations in tax and legal regimes in different countries posed another challenge -...

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